Something to be looked at
July 24, 2019 2:54 AM   Subscribe

Yushi Li, a photography-focussed artist talks about two of her projects, My Tinder Boys and Your Reservation is Confirmed, which allow her to use her work “to explore sexual desire”. (NSFW)

"For quite a long period of time, women have always been something pretty. Something to be looked at. I'm quite tired of seeing naked women everywhere. And everyone's talking about how beautiful female bodies are. I agree with that 100%, but I think that male bodies are equally as beautiful."
posted by greenhornet (7 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite


 
I agree with that 100%, but I think that [WHITE] male bodies are equally as beautiful

Is this just a pretentious racist self-hating bullshit artist? She's a woman of color and upon scanning about a dozen of the photos in her talk, not one is a man of color.

Actually, not one of those white male bodies even appears to be outside the desirable range of late teens to late thirties. This is supposed to be some kind of work of deep thought?
posted by Borborygmus at 3:34 AM on July 24, 2019


She does specifically call out in her introduction that her chosen specialization is photos of naked white men.
posted by Fraxas at 3:39 AM on July 24, 2019


Self-awareness isn't an antidote to odiousness. I thought we agreed that when people say "I know this sounds racist but..." and follows it up with a racist statement, that person is still odious?
posted by Borborygmus at 4:12 AM on July 24, 2019


The foot's on the other shoe now and people are angry, so angry!
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:51 AM on July 24, 2019 [9 favorites]


There's a very specific script she's flipping here, taking those whom we think of as occupying the most privileged position in society (conventionally attractive white men) and putting them in the role of the sexually objectified rather than the objectifier. Certainly there are conventionally unattractive men and men of color who also objectify women, but the counteracting tension of privilege vs. disadvantage in using them as models would completely murk up the intended artistic message, which is more nuanced than "let's just look at men for a change."
posted by drlith at 5:59 AM on July 24, 2019 [25 favorites]


Absolutely love the attitude and the final work. Looking forward to her next projects. And yes, seanmpuckett has it.
posted by ouke at 6:43 AM on July 24, 2019


Amazing. I’m interested in how the project seemed to progress from Tinder to using a model bank and reserving residential spaces for the photos. The messages she showed through Tinder were just what you’d expect. She was asking the men to allow themselves to be objectified but many were steadfast in their refusal/inability to flip the script. Of course, it is their right to refuse to consent to being objectified. But that’s a right no woman has.

In order to include herself in the images, the Tinder boys were probably not safe.

Very interesting and she’s funny. Thinking about race, how would it change the tenor of the work if she were white? Black? White with POC models?
posted by amanda at 7:02 AM on July 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


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